24 June–8 July 2019
Al-Haq Center for Applied International Law is pleased to announce its Fifth International Law Summer School for post-graduate law students, legal researchers and professionals in the fields of international law and human rights. The training will take place over two weeks in Ramallah, occupied Palestinian territory More...

Nine Tibetans sentenced up to 7 years in prison under China’s “organised crime” crackdown
A notice issued in February 2018 by the Tibet Autonomous Region Public Security Department had criminalised various human rights activities such as local activists espousing causes like economic freedom, right to livelihood, environmental protection, cultural freedom (Article More...

How—and how much—housing and land rights violations affect women
Dispossession, forced eviction and other land and housing rights violations can have a more-significant and differentiated impact on women, given that women are often more social and economically vulnerable than men. This is particularly true, as women often start out from a More...

Rising house prices and rents have sparked protests in London, Berlin and New York. Residents show how citizens are taking on city developers.
BERLIN—Last Saturday, as the sun shone on thousands of Berliners gathered in Alexanderplatz, one placard stood out in the crowd. Written on it — beneath a grotesque cartoon More...

Indigenous peoples go to court to save the Amazon from oil company greed
On 27 February, hundreds of Indigenous Waorani elders, youth and leaders arrived in the city of Puyo, Ecuador. They left their homes deep in the Amazon rainforest to march peacefully through the streets, hold banners, sing songs and, More...

New report highlights the unrelenting crisis of forced evictions, finds over 200,000 persons evicted in India in 2018. Over 114 houses demolished every day, 23 people evicted every hour.
On the eve of India’s General Elections, Housing and Land Rights Network India (HLRN) held a press conference in New Delhi today More...

On the eve of India’s General Elections, Housing and Land Rights Network India (HLRN) held a press conference in New Delhi today to release a new publication: Adjudicating the Human Right to Adequate Housing: Analysis of Important Judgments from Indian High Courts.
As documented by HLRN, India’s courts often have ordered More...

Today, UN Special Rapporteur on to Adequate Housing Leilani Farha held a press conference in Copenhagen to speak about letters that she and Surya Deva, Chair-Rapporteur of the UN Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises jointly released to governments and corporations More...

In a First, Palestinians Challenge Israel’s Settlement Enterprise—in a US Court
The challenge comes in response to a case filed by Israeli settlers against Airbnb.
Randa Wahbe is a United States citizen with West Bank residency who is studying for a PhD in anthropology at Harvard University. Over the years, the 31-year-old More...

Competition and control over land are among the common root causes and subjects of conflict, as well as the underlying factors hindering recovery and durable peace. Meanwhile, land has not been adequately treated in conflict management and resolution. At the same, the land and conflict nexus is only becoming more More...

Drastic deterioration in security across Burkina Faso as 70,000 flee their homes in past two months, UN warns
The landlocked West African country of Burkina Faso is facing “unprecedented” displacement, triggered by armed groups and intercommunal clashes, and exacerbated by long-term food insecurity, UN aid officials said on Tuesday.
According to the More...

SCOTUS decision in Jam et al v. International Finance Corporation (IFC) denies absolute immunity to IFC…with caveats
When it rains, it somehow pours.
February 2019 ended up being such a landmark month for international law adjudication. A day after the International Court of Justice released its landmark Chagos Advisory Opinion (finely discussed by More...

MANAUS—The 53-year-old Tucano chief, Francisco de Souza Pereira, was shot four days ago in the "Urucaia" indigenous community in the Nova Cidade neighborhood of Manaus.
The crime occurred around 01:00 AM. Francisco was sleeping with his wife and a daughter when three hooded men invaded the house on Bahia Street.
More...

The biodiversity that is crucial for our food and agriculture is disappearing by the day
FAO launches the first-ever global report on the state of biodiversity that underpins our food systems
ROME—The first-ever report of its kind presents mounting and worrying evidence that the biodiversity that underpins our food systems is disappearing More...

Indian Supreme Court orders eviction of 1 million tribal forest dwellers
NEW DELHI—India’s Supreme Court has ordered the eviction of over 1.1 million tribal and other traditional forest dwellers, after it recently rejected their ancient ownership claims on jungle land.
Experts estimate that the 20 February legal fiat could result in More...

SAN SALVADOR, Feb 19 2019 (IPS) - Like an octopus, metals mining has been spreading its tentacles throughout Central America and dealing a blow to the region’s agriculture and natural ecosystems, according to affected villagers, activists and a new report on the problem.
“Where the mining company is operating was land More...

UN: Fighting, Instability Have Displaced 100,000 in Burkina Faso
GENEVA—More than 100,000 people have been displaced by factional fighting and lawlessness in Burkina Faso, most within the past two months, according to a U.N. report published Tuesday.
"Burkina Faso is, for the first time in its history, facing massive internal displacement," More...

Japan’s Cabinet considers legislation recognizing the indigenous Ainu people for first time.
The government approved a bill Friday to recognize the country’s ethnic Ainu minority as an “indigenous” people for the first time, after decades of discrimination against the group.
The Ainu people, many of whom live in northern Hokkaido, have long More...

In early September 2018, after years of legal proceedings, the justices of Israel’s High Court determined there was no legal obstacle to demolishing the structures in the community of al-Khan al-Ahmar, located about two kilometers south of the Jerusalem-choking Kfar Adumim settler colony. The Court delivered that conclusion as the More...

The Zimbabwe People’s Land Rights Movement (ZPLRM), a member of the Habitat International Coalition (HIC), has slammed government over planned displacements of thousands of villagers across the country and urged President Emmerson Mnangagwa to walk his talk over the irreversibility of the land reform programme.
HIC is an independent international coalition More...

Statement of Abahlali baseMjondolo
Last week, the news was full of reports on the arrival of three of the four Casspirs (mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles) that have been ordered by the eThekwini Municipality. We first heard about the order of the Casspirs in 2017, when it was reported that the More...

A study by an MIT economist shows that the United States of America has regressed materially to a third-world nation for most of its citizens.
America divided: This concept increasingly graces political discourse in the U.S., pitting left against right, conservative thought against the liberal agenda. But for decades, [U.S.] Americans More...

Land conflicts have risen in Vietnam since the Communist Party launched economic reforms in the 1980s
BANGKOK—The demolition of about 100 homes near Ho Chi Minh City, including one owned by the Catholic Church, has pitted the church against authorities in the latest such dispute over land in the Communist Party-ruled More...

The draft Expropriation Bill gazetted by public works minister Thulas Nxesi last week for public comment was a disappointment and would not accelerate land reform, the Land Access Movement of SA (Lamosa) said.
It believes the proposed legislation lacks justice and provides no equity for homeland dwellers.
Lamosa, a federation of rural More...

CAPE TOWN — They say it takes a strong constitution to become a country’s president, but it also takes a strong Constitution to bring to account an almost omnipotent president. Or former president, shall we say. One who came to believe that he could get away with almost anything once More...

Up to 10.3 million hectares of land has been acquired by investors from individuals, communities and governments in the 11 Nile basin countries since 2000. That is according to Land Matrix, a global and independent land monitoring initiative.
Apart from private investors, Land Matrix data shows that several countries outside of More...

The Israeli Supreme Court yesterday rejected a petition submitted by 104 Palestinians against claims by a right-wing Israeli organisation paving the way for 700 Palestinians to be forced from their homes, Haaretz reported.
The 700 Palestinians, who make up 70 families, have been going through a legal battle to protect their More...

NEW YORK—The UN General Assembly’s Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) passed a draft that would have the Assembly adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. This vote assures that the Declaration will enter the next edition of Human Rights: More...

Under Ben Carson, more families live in HUD housing that fails health and safety inspections
While HUD Secretary Ben Carson pledged to fix low-income housing, the number of properties cited for health and safety violations has been on the rise.
HARTFORD CT—The mold started in the basement. But it soon spread to More...

Are our global property rights still guaranteed? 40 years of global struggle for rights to housing, land and the city
Gentrification, forced evictions, lack of access to housing - these are all concepts familiar to us. They pose serious and real threats in all corners of the world and can violate More...

We all need safe food and clean water.
BALTIMORE MD—Baltimore voters made history today by voting in favor of passing ballot question E, a city charter amendment that bans privatization of the city’s water and sewer systems. The Baltimore City Council voted unanimously to ban water privatization earlier this year. As More...

In 2004, the Newmont Mining Corporation hired me to investigate human rights accusations facing its gold mine operation in Peru, despite the company feeling like it had done everything right. It got the necessary government approvals, made legal land purchases, and launched various philanthropic initiatives, yet widespread protestscontinued to disrupt its efforts.
After meeting More...

This article is based on a forthcoming policy paper examining the causes, characteristics, and consequences of the eviction of Syrian migrants and refugees from Riyak, Lebanon in 2017, in light of recent developments encouraging Syrian refugees to return to their home country.
Lebanon’s Eviction of Syrian Refugees and the Threat of More...

On 19 September, Liberian President George Manneh Weah signed into law the Land Rights Bill (LRB), a landmark piece of legislation that recognizes the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities to their customary lands and gives customary land the same standing as private land in Liberia.
This historic victory sets More...

Germany`s housing crisis fuels black market for refugees. Activists are concerned that a shortage of housing in Germany is hindering refugee integration
MUNICH--Firas swapped civil war in Syria for a chaotic refugee camp in Germany. Now he wants a home.
Since January 2016, the 28-year-old graduate has lived in three different refugee More...

Statement of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, regarding the Situation in Palestine
I have been following with concern the planned eviction of the Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar, in the West Bank. Evacuation by force now appears imminent, and with it the prospects for further escalation and More...

UN Human Rights Council passes a resolution adopting the peasant rights declaration in Geneva
GENEVA—Seventeen years of long and arduous negotiations later, peasants and other people working in rural areas are only a step away from having a UN Declaration that could defend and protect their rights to land, seeds, biodiversity, local More...

Chevron must pay for environmental damage in Ecuador, Constitution Court rules
The Constitutional Court of Ecuador has issued a long-awaited ruling in favor of those affected by the transnational oil company Chevron, which operated through its subsidiary Texaco in Ecuador between 1964 and 1990. The court rejected the protection action that More...

OAKLAND CA—Today, the Oakland Institute releases Kuipoteza Serengeti, Ardhi Ya Wamasai Iliyopaswa Kudumu Milele, a Kiswahili translation of the report Losing the Serengeti: The Maasai Land that was to Run Forever.
Based on field research, never publicly-seen-before documents, and an in-depth investigation into Tanzania’s land laws, the report reveals how Tanzania’s More...

Anguish as houses demolished to pave way for Kibera link road
23 July 2018
Julius Otieno, Star
Human rights activists have accused Kenya Urban Roads Authority of violating the agreement that would have seen victim of Kibera evicted in a humane way.
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights has in this regard called More...

Despite international condemnations, Israel prepares to demolish Khan al-Ahmar
KHAN AL-AHMAR, occupied West Bank, Palestine—Scenes of destruction and despair spread over the Palestinian Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar on Wednesday, as armed Israeli forces arrived at the village’s entrance with bulldozers.
The nightmare that the village’s 200 residents had feared for over More...

Puerto Rico continues to recover from Hurricane Maria as it commemorates 120 years of US occupation (since 1898). In the ongoing post-disaster phase, the island Is becoming a “playground for the privileged,” where disaster-capitalist investors move in as homes foreclose and schools close.
While healthcare, the public school system and infrastructure More...

America`s poor becoming more destitute under Trump: U.N. expert
GENEVA—Poverty in the United States is extensive and deepening under the Trump administration whose policies seem aimed at removing the safety net from millions of poor people, while rewarding the rich, a U.N. human rights investigator has found.
Philip Alston, U.N. special rapporteur More...

The demolitions in Bhuri Tekri, without prior warning, took place just a week after the announcement of ‘Swachhta Sarvekshan 2018’, with the city retaining the number one rank in the list.
To make cities beautiful, forced eviction of slum dwellers amid promises of resettlement have led to massive displacement of working More...

The indigenous Maasai people of Tanzania face appalling levels of human rights abuses, including intimidation, violent evictions, arrests, beatings, and starvation, by the Tanzanian government and some of the safari businesses that operate in the country, the Oakland Institute said today in a new report.
· In the past year, tens More...

Growing Resistance: The Rise and Fall of Another Mozambique Land Grab
The rice fields of Xai-Xai, three hours up the coast from Maputo, are vast, coming into view as we descended onto the alluvial plain from the villages that dot the hills above. They stretch across the plains toward the Indian Ocean More...

SEOUL/GENEVA (23 May 2018) – United Nations expert, Leilani Farha, urged national and local governments of South Korea to shift their approach to housing and homelessness to meet current human rights standards.
Leilani Farha, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, noted that South Korea now has the More...

Tens of thousands of Louisiana residents could face eviction from nursing and group homes
More than 30,000 Medicaid recipients in Louisiana, many in nursing or group homes, could lose their benefits due to proposed state cuts -- a situation that could force thousands to move.
Louisiana Department of Health Deputy Secretary More...

HIC-HLRN has just updated the HICtionary: Key Habitat Terms from A to Z. This reference work is the result of deliberation and debate across multiple specializations, regions and cultures within the membership of Habitat International Coalition (HIC). The purpose of that debate—and this reference work—have been to consolidate and harmonize More...

The monthly Moving Forward is published with support from Jews Say No! That organization engages in community education, street theatre, and organizing to make their members’ voices heard in Jewish communities and as partners in the broader movement for justice in Palestine/Israel. The following article is the editorial to Moving More...

By :Platform No to the Destruction of Sur, Istanbul Sur Solidarity, Mesopotamia Ecology Movement, and Initiative to Keep Hasankeyf Alive

30 April 2018

DIYARBAKIR / AMED—As part of the Global Sur and Hasankeyf Action Day in almost 30 cities, actions have been organized on 28 April 2018. Activists and civil organization raised awareness on the ongoing destruction of the two antique cities Sur and Hasankeyf at the Tigris River in North (Turkish) Kurdistan. More...

Habitat International Coalition’s Housing and Land Rights Network welcomes the SDGs and their performance indicators as a complement to development efforts that uphold the integrity of the UN Charter and the UN System built on three purposeful pillars: (1) peace and security, (2) progressive development and (3) human rights. We More...

Taranaki are expected to host next year’s national commemoration of the New Zealand Wars and yet the Waitara land-grab that sparked the Taranaki Wars has still yet to be fully resolved.
The first national commemoration of the New Zealand Wars (Te Pūtake o te Riri) was held last month in Northland. The More...

In her opening remarks to the Forum in New York, the chairperson, Mariam Wallet Aboubakrine, a medical doctor from Timbuktu, Mali, called the land husbandry of Aboriginal peoples “part of our history and heritage.”
But few countries have acted to defend these peoples’ collective rights, she added.
“Law enforcement is inadequate or More...

HLRN has just released its new publication Right to the City in Greater Beirut: Context Assessment in Light of the Refugee and Displacement Crisis. This assessment offers critical insight into municipal governance in Greater Beirut, a city largely formed and characterized by human migration through its history, while more recently More...

Rohingya give Myanmar official list of demands for repatriation
DHAKA—A Myanmar Cabinet minister visited a sprawling refugee camp in Bangladesh for Rohingya Muslims, who described the violence that forced them to flee Myanmar and presented a list of demands for their repatriation.
Social Welfare Minister Win Myat Aye on Wednesday met More...

Rape and murder of Kashmiri – girls in religious policy
SRINAGAR (Indian-occupied Kashmir)—The girl, just 8 years old, grazes the ponies of her family on a cold January day in the forests of the Himalayan foothills when she was kidnapped. Her raped and mutilated body was found in the woods More...

By :Jeffrey Olivet and Marc Dones, SPARC and National Alliance to End Homelessness

11 April 2018

In recent years, an increasingly urgent dialogue has emerged around race and equity in [the United States of] America. But that dialogue has generally overlooked one of the most visible manifestations of racial inequity: homelessness.
Homelessness is not colorblind. People of color are dramatically more likely than their White counterparts to More...

Mozambique’s coastal village on the brink of extinction from irresponsible Chinese mining company. Mining giant Haiyu denies responsibility for flood that left 290 people homeless, while Mozambican authorities fail to regulate mining industry to ensure people’s safety, denying village residents reparation for their losses.
An irresponsible Chinese mining operation in Mozambique More...

In Palestine, "the Return March" is emerging, and Israel is killing the demonstrators. Three thousand occupation soldiers deployed in the vicinity of the Gaza Strip with orders to fire live bullets. Thousands of Palestinians marched Friday near the border between Gaza and Israel in a protest march called More...

Most farms in developing and least developed countries are small, generally plots of less than two hectares of land. Smallholder farmers manage over 80% of the world’s estimated 500 million small farms and provide over 80% of the food consumed in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, contributing significantly to poverty reduction More...

Over sixty people killed, thousands of houses burned down and more than 100,000 displaced people, including 42,000 refugees in neighbouring Uganda. Those are the consequences so far of the violence in the northeastern Ituri province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since December 2017.
The violence marks a counterpoint to More...

South Africa‘s parliament has passed a motion that could lead to the seizure of land from white farmers without paying them compensation.
Passed by an overwhelming majority of 241 votes to 83 votes against, the proposal to amend Section 25 of the constitution would allow expropriation of land without any financial More...

Dubai Land Department announces the conclusion of the first Arab land governance conference
The conference, organized in partnership with the World Bank, the Global Land Tool Network, UN-HABITAT, the League of Arab States and the Arab Surveying Association, was attended by more than 300 participants, representing several regional and international bodies.
Dubai More...

Thousands of Children Displaced by Ethnic Violence in DRC’s Ituri Province. GENEVA—The U.N. children’s fund reports at least 90,000 children have been forced to flee their homes in the face of escalating inter-communal violence in Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ituri Province. Ituri’s Djugu territory in northeastern D.R.C. has been the More...

Forced from rainforest, Peruvian tribe faces new woes in Lima slum
LIMA—Wedged between the rubbish-choked Rimac River and lanes of traffic belching fumes, the Cantagallo slum in downtown Lima is a far cry from the Amazon rainforest land that the Shipibo-Konibo people were forced to flee two decades ago.
Hundreds of More...

Of Emmanuel Macron`s many bold promises since sweeping to power last year, his pledge to completely banish homelessness from the streets of France was perhaps the boldest.
The president gave himself until the close of 2017 to end rough-sleeping once and for all - but a midnight stroll through Paris shows More...

Trudeau promises new legal framework for Indigenous people “We need to get to a place where Indigenous peoples in Canada are in control of their own destiny,” PM says
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is promising a fundamental rethink of how the federal government recognizes Indigenous rights and title, vowing to work More...

José Napoleón Tarrillo Astonitas murdered for opposing land traffickers seeking to clear land in the Chaparrí Ecological Reserve, say local witnesses
A criminal gang involved in land trafficking has tortured and murdered a community leader in northern Peru, according to his wife and local villagers who witnessed the killing.
José Napoleón Tarrillo More...

HUD Tenant Leaders Demand Congress Declare Trump’s 2019 Budget “Dead on Arrival”
Elected leaders of the national US tenant union today demanded immediate rejection by Congress of President Donald Trump’s 2019 budget request, released on February 12.
“Trump’s budget will push millions of people from their homes; starve seniors, children and More...

Being evicted isn’t just a condition of poverty, it’s a cause, says Matthew Desmond, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City" (Crown Books).
While much research and conversation has been devoted to other poverty-related topics such as nutrition, education, and violence, the Princeton sociologist More...

Paris, Budapest 6 February 2018: In the last year 11,309 Romani people were evicted from their homes in France, the majority of which (8,161) were forcefully evicted by authorities. A further 2,055 left their homes before the arrival of authorities, under pressure of an imminent eviction.
Last year saw a 12% increase More...

LDA’s forced eviction of Model Town slum dwellers is shocking, but not surprising. No one with a shred of shame can imagine such a thing happening in any democracy; but this is how the Lahore Development Authority works.
For the dwellers at Sector M, Model Town Extension, there have been many More...

The great land grab cover- up: how the government is helping chiefs and mining companies to steal your land
You’re sitting at home, minding your own business, reading the news on your phone. If you are part of an unfortunate 30% of the population, you could, at any time, get a More...

German coalition talks to continue on Monday and focus on health and labor
More than four months after a national election, Europe’s largest economy and pre-eminent power-broker is in political paralysis, causing concern among investors and partner countries that policymaking on issues such as Britain’s looming departure from the European Union More...

Advice given by World Bank to government officials against demolishing over 1,200 houses between Ubungo and Kimara suburbs of Dar es Salaam to pave way for a six-lane highway has saved them from losing their houses.
The over 8,000 residents who had already been served with letters by Tanzania Roads Agency More...

Trump`s ”Gold Rush” style land grab in Utah begins today
The Trump regime`s decision to withdraw federal protections from millions of acres of public land in Utah last year will kick off a Wild West-era land claim process starting on Friday.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, on Friday More...

Genesis Housing Association is considering the future of Alexandra Court in Southend, which could see it torn down and a new block built in its place with double the number of flats.
One woman spoke of her dismay after being told it was her "home for life."
Genesis has assured tenants they More...

Of the many grievances from South Africa’s decades of white rule, the theft of land still smarts more than most. The “Natives Land Act” of 1913 set aside 90% of the country for whites, who made up less than a third of its people. Over the next eight decades a More...

China’s Belt and Road Initiative will result in important strategic consequence for the countries of South Asia, writes David Brewster. But its impact on China itself should not be ignored.
In geopolitical terms, South Asia has long functioned like an island, nominally attached to Eurasia but not really part of it. More...

Landless cultivators to be farmers too! Change of definition to extend assorted benefits to 14 cr currently excluded
Change of definition to extend assorted benefits to 14 crore currently excluded.
Over 14 crore (140 million) households who cultivate on land owned by others under a formal lease agreement or even under a More...

Thank you to the many members and supporters who lobbied their MPs ahead of the December 2017 debate in the UK Parliament Westminster Hall.
ICAHD UK provided extensive briefing documents to help MPs and constituents formulate the key arguments against settlements and house demolitions.
The full debate can be read online.
Stephen Kinnock More...

Thank you to the many members and supporters who lobbied their MPs ahead of the December 2017 debate in the UK Parliament Westminster Hall.
ICAHD UK provided extensive briefing documents to help MPs and constituents formulate the key arguments against settlements and house demolitions.
The full debate can be read online.
Stephen Kinnock More...

About a year ago, one hundred families living in houses owned by a private company on Bratislavská, Vlhká and Francouzská streets were informed that their rent leases will not be renewed. In response, the desperate tenants and citizens’ initiative “Chceme bydlet!” organized a street demonstration.
After intense negotiations between the firm More...

Belgium has stepped in to help out the UN Agency assisting Palestinian refugees with an immediate disbursement of $23 million Wednesday a day after the Trump administration suspended $65 million in aid for the international organization.
Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said Wednesday that "for a lot of More...

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement
Another Comrade Has Fallen in the Struggle for Land
Our movement has been facing a lot of brutality in the last three months. On 19 November our chairperson in the Sisonke Village land occupation in Lamontville, Sibonelo Mpeku, was kidnapped and murdered. On 17 December 2017 Soyiso Nkqayini More...

In late 2016, I attended government-to-government meetings in Rapid City, South Dakota, between several Plains Tribal Government representatives and US Federal Government officials. I listened to a tribal elder testify that her young grandson was hospitalized with an E. coli infection caused by hydraulic fracturing water contamination in her community More...

A new UN declaration could finally protect rural and landless peoples. The UN has drafted a groundbreaking declaration that has the potential to protect the human rights of peasants, rural workers and landless people. There is room, however, to strengthen its provisions.
Despite their significant contributions to food security, sustainable development, More...

The U.N. finds growing numbers of Americans are living in the most impoverished circumstances. How did we get here?
“Finish all your food,” my mother used to tell me. “There’s a child in Africa who would love to have that food on your plate.” It was an effective disciplinary approach, especially More...

ANC`s land expropriation decision an admission of its own failures
The ANC’s decision at its national conference to go ahead with the expropriation of land without compensation is an admission of its own failure to pursue real land distribution, experts say.
The ruling party announced on Wednesday evening that its committee on More...

Aggressive Chinese eviction methods fuel anger among residents forced from rented homes
Fear and cold stalk the streets of Feijia, a north-eastern suburb of Beijing that is to be largely demolished on Friday, leaving hundreds of migrant families potentially homeless in winter.
Leaflets scattered across Feijia’s main street depict photos of masked More...

Liberals detail $40B for 10-year national housing strategy, introduce Canada Housing Benefit. New strategy aims to build 100,000 new units, repair 300,000 and cut homelessness by 50%.
The federal government has announced the details of its ten-year national housing strategy, which includes the introduction of a housing benefit for families that More...

The following article series follows the Rohingya flight as it has grown since August 2017. According to UN OCHA, As of 4 October 2017, Bangladesh hosts more than 800,000 Rohingya refugees, and this number continues to increase daily. Before this crisis began, the country was already hosting a verified population More...

Deadly mass forced evictions make life misery for waterfront communities
Over 30,000 forcibly evicted from settlements in Lagos state in defiance of court orders
11 people unlawfully killed and at least 17 missing after violent evictions by security forces and unidentified armed men
300,000 others are under threat of further forced evictions
Evicted residents More...

Germany is facing a shocking housing crisis with 1.2 million people expected to be living in homeless shelters by 2018.
The Federal Homeless Association estimates the current number of homeless people in the country totals around 860,000.
That figure is expected to rise another 40 per cent to 1.2 million by the More...

From Africa to the World: Struggling for Human Rights to Housing, Land and the City
Mid-October 2017, Nairobi was host to an intense engagement on housing rights, social justice and the right to the city. This was amid political turmoil in Kenyan towns and cities, and unrelated to this but largely More...

Githu Muigai enjoined in Samburu eviction case
Attorney-General Githu Muigai has been enjoined in a case in which retired President Daniel Moi was sued by the Samburu community for transferring 17,105 acres (69,217,493.44 square meters) of their land in Laikipia North to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS).
The Environment and Land Court More...

Eight European Union countries wrote an official protest letter to Israel, demanding over €30,000 ($35,400) in compensation for confiscating and demolishing structures and infrastructure which the countries had built in Area C of the West Bank, which is under full Israeli control.
A senior European diplomat told Haaretz that the letter, More...

Report on farm widows of Maharashtra highlights human rights violations
recommends urgent state intervention to prevent social and economic exclusion
NEW DELHI—A study released today by Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN) India (New Delhi), and Prakriti Resource Centre for Women and Development (Nagpur) reveals the acute vulnerability of farm widows More...

Residents of Fattis Mansions on the corner of Jeppe and Harrison Street in the Johannesburg CBD were forcefully evicted by close to 200 Red Ants on Wednesday. The eviction, which affected dozens of people, started at 7am and proceeded well into the afternoon. Residents’ belongings were pulled from the building More...

Cato Manor residents say eThekwini Municipality carried out brutal and illegal evictions
Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA. Press Statement
The Movement of Abahlali baseMjondolo continues to face serious and unlawful repression by the ANC led municipality in Durban. Right now, the community in Cato Manor right now are trying to collect all the More...

Asia is the biggest and most populous continent, also home to some of the fastest growing countries in the world such as India, China, Indonesia, and Malaysia. The continent consists of 48 countries and over 4 billion people, or half of the world’s total population. With this fact, it is More...

Africa has some of the world’s most unequal cities.1 Informal settlements in African cities, and the struggles that are fought in their defense, are evidence of deep-rooted exclusion.2 They have inherited colonial segregated planning laws that are socio-economically exclusive, resulting in cement cities and slums. In many African former colonial More...

Despite committing to deforestation-free supply chains, the top 10 food and beverage companies lack policies to protect the activists and communities caring for the environment from intimidation, threats and attacks, according to a new Oxfam report.
Commercial farming of some everyday food ingredients, like soy and palm oil, are driving massive More...

The victims were targeted by a criminal gang who wanted to use their lands to grow lucrative palm oil, according to local indigenous leaders
Six farmers have been shot dead by a criminal gang who wanted to seize their farms to muscle in on the lucrative palm oil trade, according More...

In advance of a high-level meeting of the General Assembly on 5 and 6 September 2017, HIC and HLRN have reviewed the High-level Independent Panel assessing the performance and capacity of UN-Habitat and posing recommendations for its future. The Panel’s report considers UN-Habitat performance and capacity from four angles, including More...

The cost of land grabbing in Mozambique`s Tete Province
Tete Province is very rich in coal. An estimated 23 billion tons of mostly untapped coal lies beneath Tete. It is expected to become the region’s energy powerhouse built on coal and hydroelectricity. However, local farmer communities have been on the losing More...

“Forced evictions of Maasai people in Loliondo, Tanzania”: Urgent Alert from the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs
The International Working Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) last week put out a short report about the violent evictions of Maasai pastoralists in Loliondo, Tanzania.
According to reliable information received by IWGIA, forced and More...

ROME—Police used violence and water cannons to evict a group of squatters, predominantly refugees, in Rome on August 24, 2017, Human Rights Watch said today. The Italian authorities should conduct a serious and transparent investigation into the use of force by police. Hundreds of people who had been living in More...

After one year of consultations held across Rakhine State (Myanmar) and in other parts of the country and the region, the UN’s Advisory Commission on Rakhine State submitted its final report to national authorities on 23 August.
The Commission, chaired by Kofi Annan, has put forward recommendations to surmount the More...

Nicaragua: Country’s future for sale as canal threatens thousands with forced eviction
The Nicaraguan government must stop placing business before the future of the country and its people, Amnesty International said in a new report today looking at a secretive deal that will lead to the construction of a canal More...

Global Peasant Movement Assesses and Responds to a Heated Political Moment
Four years ago, La Vía Campesina brought its peasant activists from around the world to Jakarta for its VI International Conference. The gathering was held in a padepokan, a Javanese center reserved for the teaching and exchanging of knowledge and More...

Land and the SDGs: Key takeaways from the 2017 HLPF and what we need to do next
This was the clear and strong message that was brought by the land community into the major global forum on the SDGs, the High Level Political Forum (HLPF), which is the central platform for More...

UN resolution seen as key win for New Urban Agenda’s contentious rights language
A new resolution from the United Nations’ top human rights body is being lauded by supporters in part because it solidifies contentious new language included in last year’s New Urban Agenda strategy on sustainable urbanization.
The UN Human Rights More...

City of Johannesburg leaves 257 men, women and children out in the cold, despite court orders
The High Court has ordered the City of Johannesburg to accommodate 257 men, women and children who were yesterday evicted from Fattis Mansions at 66 Harrison Street, Johannesburg.
The residents of the property initially More...

EPA Refuses to pay claims after mine spill dumps 3,000,000 gallons of toxic waste into water on Native American land
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has refused to pay more than $1.2 billion in claims filed against it in response to the Gold King Mine spill, reported the Farmington Daily Times.
The EPA says the More...

As the UN High-Level Forum opens in New York, a global civil society report spotlights the role of big business in hindering development and deepening economic and social disparity.
Unbridled privatization, corporate capture and mass-scale tax abuse are blocking progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals, argues a new report by a More...

Inside Brazil`s Indigenous Reserve 124, Chief Geraldo Apurina walks along a muddy footpath, past towering trees as yet untouched by Amazon loggers. Much of the land around the reserve has been cleared of trees. Grazing land for cattle now stretches as far as the eye can see from the highway, More...

These are all the people the Senate health care bill will hurt
The actual policies contained in the Better Care Reconciliation Act, the Senate Republican plan introduced on Thursday to repeal and replace Obamacare, would help some Americans a lot. The biggest winners are households making $250,000 a year or more, More...

Congolese security forces and a militia fighting them have killed at least 3,383 people in the central Kasai region since October, the Catholic church said on Tuesday, in the most detailed report to date on the violence.
Church officials, citing their own sources in the remote territory bordering Angola, said the More...

In many developing countries, land grabbing takes place on a large scale, either for the purposes of mining or agriculture. This loss of land is disastrous for the affected village communities. Awareness of the problem is growing, however, and there are more and more tools and guidelines available to soften More...

Spaces for Change NGO Staff Arrested, Released
LAGOS—A Task Force squad comprising demolition agents of the Lagos State Government and scores of heavily-armed security operatives invaded Badia-East this morning, Thursday, June 15, 2017. With the aid of bulldozers, sledge hammers, iron bars, and earth-moving equipment, they levelled all the structures in More...

The flames hadn’t even been extinguished from Grenfell Tower before people started screaming that no one should “politicise” this tragedy. As I type this, though, at least 12 people are dead, and authorities expect that number to drastically climb. Most of those who perished, or who lost everything in the More...

A panel of judges in the High Court in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, judged this morning that the cargo on board the vessel NM Cherry Blossom is rightfully detained, and that a trial to determine its ownership is to take place.
A panel of judges in South Africa ruled today More...

Tibetan nomads forced from resettlement towns to make way for development
Tibetan nomads previously forced from traditional grazing lands in a state-directed resettlement scheme in Qinghai are now being told to go back, as authorities begin to target their current homes for development as tourist centers and housing for government employees, More...

The powers that be in Sipasarubali, Odisha work to take over forest land to build a beach resort, villagers who are trying to fight them are under attack.
Puri, Odisha: On April 28, a friend and I went to Gola and Gopinathpur villages in Odisha to meet activists who, in the early 1990s, had More...

For healthy and quality food, decent work, and a just and sustainable agricultural policy in a Europe of the People and of Solidarity.
We call on ECVC’s member organizations, allied groups, grassroots networks, and the whole peasant and food sovereignty movement in Europe to mobilize this 25 March – on the More...

The need for a UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and other People Working in Rural Areas is all the more urgent and evident in the 21st century. Despite years of campaigning for a better recognition and protection of the rights of peasants, displacements and criminalization continue affecting hundreds More...

As we celebrate the International Women’s day today, emphasis should be put to the extent to which some of the obligations have been achieved with regard to women’s basic needs including shelter, access to land and land security etc. The state of shelter development in Uganda shows that, with the More...

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson referred to slaves as "immigrants" while speaking Monday to HUD employees.
"That`s what America is about, a land of dreams and opportunity," Carson said. "There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for More...

Across the wide world, women are rising up to protect the Earth, one another, and the common good.
Women around the world stand at the forefront of rising movements to defend and protect the health of water, land, air and diverse communities. On this International Women’s Day, it is vital to More...

We live in a world of abundance, yet ensuring food security remains challenging. Women are responsible for more than half of global food production. Yet they account for 70 per cent of the world’s hungry and are disproportionately affected by malnutrition.
Achieving food security is not only a question of ensuring More...

Land haunts Germany`s effort to atone for Africa genocide
OKAHANDJA, Namibia—Namibia’s Herero people are heartened that Germany is keen to atone for the genocide of their ancestors, but they expect something Berlin says it is not in a position to give.
“What we want is our land,” said 74-year-old Alex Kaubtauuapela, whose More...

Amid land grabs and evictions, Cambodia jails leading activist
PHNOM PENH—Even before a Cambodian judge sentenced land rights activist Tep Vanny to prison, her fellow campaigners said her fate had already been sealed.
Vanny, who fought the evictions of thousands of residents from lakeside land in Phnom Penh to make way for More...

African migrants in South Africa are in fear for their lives—again
Once again, there are signs of growing xenophobia in South Africa. Despite the lives lost in previous waves of violence, the country has still not learned this painful lesson.
It’s a familiar escalating narrative: vigilante groups accuse foreign migrants of local More...

In the United States, the 2016 Democratic Party Platform featured stronger-than-ever language that seemed to embrace most of the substantive recommendations that the National Alliance of HUD Tenants (NAHT) proposed that year: increased funding for vouchers, public housing repairs, fair housing, although without specific dollar recommendations. In preparing for the More...

West Bank: United Nations Special Rapporteur urges the security council to stop illegal settlements
GENEVA—United Nations Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk has called on the United Nations Security Council and the General Assembly to explore effective diplomatic and political measures to ensure Israeli compliance with Security Council resolution 2334, which More...

Europe’s largest pension funds heavily invested in illegal Israeli settler colonies.
Europe’s five largest pension funds have €7.5 billion invested in companies with business activities in and around illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. This is at odds with United Nations guidelines, clear warnings from 18 European countries, and undermines More...

VATICAN CITY—When the Pope calls you to Rome, you go.
Dozens of mayors from around the world heeded the call in 2015, when Pope Francis invited them to the Vatican to discuss actions their cities could take against climate change and human trafficking. And it happened again last month, when Francis More...

Chiquita made a killing from Colombia’s civil war. Will their victims finally see justice? A long-running case against the banana giant is moving forward in U.S. court.
Getting an interview with Anabel (not her real name) is not easy. In Colombia, witnessing paramilitary violence against your family generally means you keep More...

Boston, Somerville mayors defiant after trump’s sanctuary city orders. Marty Walsh and Joe Curtatone say they won’t back down amid threats of federal funding cuts.
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and Somerville Mayor Joe Curatone took a stand against Donald Trump Wednesday after the president announced a blockbuster executive order to target so-called More...

Civil society has called on the World Bank to terminate its Enabling the Business of Agriculture initiative.
In mid-January, 157 organisations and individuals sent a letter to World Bank president Jim Yong Kim calling for the termination of the Bank’s Enabling the Business of Agriculture initiative (EBA, see Bulletin May 2014, More...

The Ovaherero and Nama people of Namibia launch lawsuit against Germany for alleged land theft and killing of 100,000 people more than 100 years ago.
Two indigenous groups in Namibia have filed a lawsuit against Germany, accusing it of genocide committed by colonial rulers more than a century ago.
The suit was filed More...

Brazil`s quilombos face eucalyptus giant in land war. "They stole our forests and our water. We took our medicine from the forest. Now, they put police and dogs at our door."
ESPIRITO SANTO, Brazil—In Sape do Norte, in the far north of Espirito Santo, Brazil, 32 communities refer to the 111,000 hectares More...

It was the first time in eight years that the UN Security Council had passed a resolution condemning Israel’s illegal construction of settler colonies in occupied Palestine. The vote came on Friday, following an unprecedented intervention of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that had U.S. President-elect Donald Trump "advising" Egyptian More...

Over 33,000 homes demolished in urban India between 2015 and 2016
New Delhi—Data collected by Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN) reveals that public authorities in India, in both the central and state spheres of government, forcibly have evicted at least 33,257 families across urban centers between January 2015 and December More...

The Guardian view on homelessness: not just a Christmas crisis. The following is an editorial
For a few days over Christmas, a massive effort by charities such as Crisis and the volunteers they recruit tries to offer something like festive cheer for thousands of people who might otherwise have been sleeping More...

On World Human Rights Day, 10 December 2016, civil society organisations across Kenya gathered to honor human rights activists in the annual human rights awards, which were held at the Netherlands Embassy in Nairobi. Hundreds attended the event, including diplomats and generations of human rights activists. The awards were coordinated More...

A new report by Amnesty International (AI) documents a campaign of violence by the Myanmar security forces against Rohingya since 9 October 2016. Soldiers and police have randomly fired on and killed civilians, raped women and girls, torched whole villages and arbitrarily arrested Rohingya men without any information about their More...

Both sides say the government is responsible for the dispute in Mexico`s Sierra Madre mountain range - but the government won`t get involved
LA YESCA, Mexico—Audelina Villagrana has run her ranch in Mexico`s Western Sierra Madre Mountains on her own since the death of her husband 23 years ago, herding livestock, More...

Wall Street is Europe’s landlord, and tenants are fighting back.
DUBLIN—The Tobun family never missed a rental payment on their modest brick rowhouse in eight years. But in February, the couple, who have two young children, received a letter warning that they would have to leave their home when the lease More...

How Albuquerque figured out how to really help its homeless population. And save money in the process.
ALBUQUERQUE—Under a cloudless desert sky, David Kelhoyoma, a Marine veteran who help liberate Kuwait City during the first Gulf War, roamed the top of a city landfill, stuffing stray bits of plastic into a More...

The World Bank acknowledges there is a water crisis in the Gaza Strip, but it blames overpumping—not the Israeli occupation. For information of Israel’s preemptive pumping of Gaza’s aquifer, see Sustainable Management of the West Bank and Gaza Strip Aquifers (SUSMAQ) report المياه العابرة للحدود (2004) and map Land Times/أحوال More...

Following the Money: Illuminating the path to justice for global land grabs
This year, our organization, Inclusive Development International, launched the Follow the Money initiative – a new tool to fight land grabs and other corporate abuses. It’s a simple idea, but we believe it has the potential to be More...

As the United Nations Special Rapporteurs on the right to adequate housing and the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, we address you today at the conclusion of our joint official visit to Portugal, which we undertook at the invitation of the Government from 5 to 13 December More...

Brazil is on the cusp of adopting a constitutional amendment that will undermine fundamental human rights for generations to come. The Proposed Constitutional Amendment 55 (or PEC 55 in its Portuguese acronym), which is currently being debated in the Senate, will freeze public spending in real terms for the next More...

2015 had been the worst year on record for killings of land and environmental defenders who are struggling to protect land, forests and rivers from privately interested takers. But, in 2016, roughly 16 land rights advocates have been killed each month from January through November.
PENANG, Malaysia—Advocacy group PAN Asia Pacific More...

Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN), India, strongly condemns the forced eviction and demolition of 250–300 homes in Kishangarh, Delhi during the winter.
A 10-year old settlement that houses between 250 and 300 families, Ward Number 2 in Kishangarh is located between Mehrauli and Vasant Kunj, near Jawaharlal Nehru University in More...

Most New Yorkers are roughly 1 paycheck away from homelessness, according to a new study.
More than half of all New Yorkers are teetering on the brink of homelessness — without enough cash in the bank to cover them in the event of a disaster or lost job, a troubling new More...

Nigerian tribal king Emere Godwin Bebe Okpabi has flown to London for a High Court hearing in which lawyers for more than 40,000 Nigerians are demanding action from Shell to clean up oil spills
King Emere Godwin Bebe Okpabi holds up a plastic bottle containing contaminated water from his community More...

Vancouver mayor on housing crisis: “I never dreamed it would get this intense.”
Gregor Robertson’s platform in 2008 vowed affordable housing and an end to homelessness. Eight years and three terms later, the city’s housing market is in a perilous place – and has forced the mayor to get creative
His first More...

GENEVA—A United Nations human rights expert has asked the Government of Nigeria for an urgent explanation of the forced eviction of 30,000 people in Lagos State in the last week. Four people are reported to have died in the latest operation to clear irregular developments along the State’s More...

The landlord who filed over 3,000 eviction notices. Pro-tenant group says a landlord who has a seat on Oakland’s housing cabinet is also the top evictor in the city, where a housing crunch has reached crisis levels
Leketha Williams was out of options. When the Oakland, California, mother was evicted and More...

Land grabbing around the Western Area Peninsular Forest Reserve is presently intensifying primarily for housing purposes. The Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Food Security is directly responsible for the protection of forests in the country and through the dedicated collaboration of the Environment Protection Agency of Sierra Leone as focal More...

THE grabbing of council land at Katima Mulilo has increased due to the influx of people from rural areas to the town in search of employment opportunities, town mayor Regina Mwiya-Simataa said in a press release last Friday.
Although Mwiya-Simataa conceded that the council had been slow in delivering land to More...

Due to pressure from the World Bank and some other foreigners, President Ghani endorsed the Law on Public-Private Partnership through a legislative decree about three weeks ago, but the law, according to jurists, doesn’t accord with Afghan context, and paves the ground for land usurpation.
Some well-placed sources revealed to The More...

Grabbing with Impunity
A significant portion of my 2016 presidential campaign underscored the need for immediate actions to halt the land-grabbing scourge. Land grabbing, here refers to large-scale land acquisitions, mainly, by foreign agribusiness invest ors, or the extraction industry—that are often preceded by grabbing of the land by government (including More...

Around the world, companies and speculators are engaged in a frantic rush for land. Millions of hectares are being bought up, citizens violently turfed off their land and critical ecosystems irrevocably damaged, in order to feed growing demand for fuel, food and raw materials.
At its worst, this is fatal. According More...

Overlooked in the elections, Portland’s homeless are organising their own camps on their own terms, but fear evictions.
PORTLAND, Oregon—When Marge Pettitt`s seven-year-old daughter broke down in tears in a homeless shelter in 2009, she made one of the hardest decisions of her life: Sending the child to live with her More...

Refugees set Calais camp on fire in protest against its dismantling and their eviction by the French government.
Syrian refugees in France`s `jungle` refugee camp have said they fear long-term separation from their family members who have reached the UK as authorities continue to dismantle the settlement.
About 40 Syrians are holding More...

Even as governments adopt the New Urban Agenda next week, multiple groups plan protests and contrary discussions.
A large crowd gathers at the Urban Social Forum in Rio de Janeiro, which took place as an alternative to the World Urban Forum in March 2010. More such events are expected at next More...

Staffan de Mistura said Thursday that the thousands of civilians trapped could die
The United Nations envoy to Syria warned Thursday that rebel-held eastern Aleppo could undergo “total” destruction by the end of the year.
Staffan de Mistura, UN special envoy for Syria, told reporters that thousands of lives could be lost, More...

Bimbo, 57 and a mother of four, grew up in Makoko, Lagos Nigeria’s largest slum, married, and established a thriving soft drink business in boisterous Badia East, another Lagos slum. Her life was upturned when the World Bank-financed Lagos Metropolitan Development and Governance Project bulldozed Badia East in 2013 without notice.
The “urban More...

End of an assured shorthold tenancy cited by nearly a third of newly homeless households, figures show
Record numbers of families are becoming homeless after being evicted by private landlords and finding themselves unable to afford a suitable alternative place to live, government figures show.
The end of an assured shorthold tenancy More...

Summary
The present report is submitted pursuant to General Assembly resolution 70/134 on assistance to refugees, returnees and displaced persons in Africa. It updates information contained in the report of the Secretary-General submitted to the Assembly at its seventieth session (A/70/337) and covers the period from 1 July 2015 to 30 More...

In 2010, 350 families of farmers and fisherfolk living in Paanama, a coastal village in the east of Sri Lanka, were forcibly and violently evicted from lands they had cultivated and lived on for over forty years. These lands were taken over by the military to establish camps, and they More...

JUBA--The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has strongly denounced what it described as the spreading violence in South Sudan’s Greater Equatoria region in past weeks, including recent attacks at Lasu settlement.
The Equatoria region witnessed recently fierce fighting in different locations between the south Sudanese government army and SPLM-IO fighters loyal More...

Calais and Dunkirk: Demolition and forced evictions from refugee camps will make things worse
“They seem to believe if they make the Calais jungle ‘disappear’ this will all go away. They do not have the means to compensate for the destruction of ten thousand homes—there isn’t nearly enough alternative accommodation.”
Breakthrough research, More...

Karens to appeal court verdict legalizing their forced evictions; indigenous organizations call for effective redress
Karen representatives today vowed to appeal against the recent Thai court verdict that ruled the authorities did not break the law in burning their properties to forcefully evict them from Kaeng Krachan National Park. Indigenous rights More...

The High Court has temporarily barred Kenya Urban Roads Authority from evicting members of the Nubian community from their homes in Kibra constituency in Nairobi in order to pave way for construction of the Southern Bypass.
The community who are complainants in the case say the respondents did not follow More...

Mass Alliance of HUD Tenants (MAHT) spearheads campaign for City Vouchers to save our homes!
In response to Boston’s growing housing and homelessness crisis, MAHT is spearheading a broad coalition of housing and community groups to propose a city-funded voucher program. The program would provide “Housing First” for people experiencing homelessness in More...

9 August 2016 marked the 12th International Day of the World’s Indigenous People, a day pronounced by the U.N. to promote the rights of the indigenous peoples of the world, while also celebrating their contributions to environmental protection.
Meanwhile, over a hundred indigenous men and women dressed in traditional garb marched in Baguio City, Philippines, in More...

The Camp of the Sacred Stones has swelled from a few dozen to more than 2,500, according to Standing Rock Sioux Tribe officials. They are calling for further review of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the end of July without a More...

In Estácio, a centrally located neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro’s North Zone, Block 15 of the Zé Keti social housing complex, part of the Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV) program, has been the home of some of the city’s remainingindigenous families since June 2013. Its residents have described the complex, built on the grounds of the former More...

The governance of land, the most lucrative asset in Kenya, has become an impediment to the economic, political, and social development of Kenya and Kenyans. Large scale corruption in land governance is highlighted daily, from unfortunate family disputes to allegations of land grabbing by former officials and recently, Presidents.
Public institutions, More...

There are many within World Bank staff and management who see Indigenous peoples as obstacles to development.
While recent years have shown a steady advancement in recognition of the rights of Indigenous peoples, last week the World Bank adopted a new policy framework that threatens to undermine this progress and put More...

While grain silos in many Western countries may overflow this winter, tens of millions of people risk going without food as hunger is being used more than ever as a weapon of war.
More than 50 million people living in 17 conflict-ridden countries are in "severe food insecurity", two UN agencies More...

US food safety campaigners outraged over GMO label law
Campaigners say new law allows producers to obscure GMO content on food packaging
Many believe GMOs and pesticides are harmful to people`s health and the environment [EPA]
Food safety organisations in the US have condemned a new law they say will allow food More...

Just 5 months since the murder of Honduran environmental defender Berta Caceres, the Bank is passing new safeguards that do more harm than good.
The World Bank is expected to approve Thursday its new “Environmental and Social Framework” which civil society groups say weakens human rights protections and will likely endanger the very communities the safeguards are intended to protect.
At issue More...

As the recipient of the 2015 EMRA Global Health Initiative Award and as the senior teaching assistant of Post-conflict Colombia and Public Health: A Project of the Open Hands Initiative and Harvard Humanitarian Initiative in Collaboration with the Universidad de Antioquia, I had the pleasure of working directly with the More...

An Experts Group Meeting – EGM was organized to review and feedback the first report of the Scoping Study. More than 30 representatives from public and private sectors, CSOs, academia, international development agencies, social leaders and activists from all over the region were gathered on July14-15 2016 in San José, More...

The “New Urban Agenda,” from its inception, is inconsistent with historic agreements, today’s global priorities and the “world we need.” Particular interests have narrowed the Habitat Agenda to urban priorities, subordinated rural areas and ignored issues of forced migration, presuming that urbanization is “inevitable” and beyond human will or policy More...

Note: HIC-HLRN republishes this article from Citiscope as a report from the ““Fulfilling Habitat Commitments: Assessing the Past - Constructing a Platform for Action,” Surabaya, 24 July 2016. However, this does not suggest that HIC or HLRN endorse the methodology or the findings of the HCI exercise, as the criteria More...

Sociologist and Harvard Professor Matthew Desmond spent a year living in Milwaukee’s inner-city neighborhoods studying the implications of poverty. Staying in rooming houses and trailer parks, he spent his days with tenants being evicted and the landlords leading the evictions. He conducted surveys and analyzed thousands of eviction records. The conclusion? Eviction More...

The mine that displaced India`s indigenous people. About 400 Adivasi families once lived near the Chaal coal mine, but blasting and water contamination forced them to leave
The earth-shattering sound of dynamite welcomed us to the small village of Lath, which sits on the edge of an open-cast coal mine. More...

107 Nobel Laureate Attack on Greenpeace Traced Back to Biotech PR Operators
WASHINGTON—Greenpeace was denied entrance yesterday (June 30) to a National Press Club Event in Washington, DC of 107 Nobel Laureates. The event was ostensibly organised by a scientific group calling itself Support Precision Agriculture to publicise a letter signed More...

UN experts issue statement on Habitat III: new agenda must be based in human rights
NEW YORK/GENEVA—As independent human rights experts appointed by the Human Rights Council, we call for a New Urban Agenda that embraces the transformative potential of human rights as a necessary framework for inclusive, vibrant and sustainable cities. More...

The following are Habitat International Coalition`s comments on the revised zero draft of the Habitat III outcome documents, submitted to the Habitat III Secretariat on 28 June 2016:
Habitat International Coalition was born out of, and—for two generations now—has faithfully upheld the Habitat Agenda as a cornerstone of its global platform. More...

In his recently released book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016, Penguin Random House, 432 pages, hardcover $28), sociologist and 2016 MacArthur Fellow Matthew Desmond explores life for low-income renters and their landlords in two high-poverty Milwaukee communities. How Housing Matters spoke with Desmond about his research More...

A forthcoming article in the American University International Law Review(AUILR) addressed “The Demise of Accountability at the World Bank?” The article by Natalie Bugalski, of Inclusive Development, examines recent trends in the accountability system at the World Bank, including the proposed Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) and developments at the More...

HLRN has joined over 40 civil society organizations to express deep concern over the impact of a monoculture agricultural project that involves the dispossession of the people living in Malen Chiefdom, Pujehun District in Sierra Leone.
The project is the subject of an investment by SOCFIN Agricultural Company Sierra Leone Ltd. More...

MARIANA, Brazil—On November 5, 2015, the Fundao dam burst in the inland municipality of Mariana in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. The Brazilian mining company Samarco, owned by two of the world`s biggest mining corporations, Vale SA and BHP Billiton, operated the dam.
Tcharly do Barmo Batista, a 23-year-old father, More...

In the United States, members of the indigenous Choctaw nation fight to reclaim their relationship with the land in a world without seasons.
Durant, Oklahoma—It`s nearly June. Every day, the Earth brings Darryl “Grey Eagle” Brown closer to the Sun, to heaven, to the Creator. That means it`s nearly time More...

With no access to their legitimate territory, the members of the Guarani and Kaiowá Apyka`i community will be prevented from exercising their fundamental rights as indigenous peoples, including feeding themselves adequately.
Despite intensive and coordinated international action, the sentence by the 1st Federal Court of Dourados, Mato Grosso do Sul has followed More...

The Open Ended Working Group (OEWG) on Connecting Smallholders to Markets of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) convened from 8-9 June 2016, at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), in Rome, Italy. Building on the outcomes of the 2015 High-Level Forum on More...

BRUSSLES/TRONDHEIM—Input-intensive crop monocultures and industrial-scale feedlots must be consigned to the past in order to put global food systems onto sustainable footing, according to the world’s foremost experts on food security, agro-ecosystems and nutrition.
The solution is to diversify agriculture and reorient it around ecological practices, whether the starting point is More...

By :European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City

07 May 2016

Defend the Right to Housing and to the City
Call for International Action
Amsterdam, 28–30 May
Join the international action and confront the meeting of the 23 EU housing ministers.
Don`t let them talk behind closed doors about the future of our cities!
On the last weekend of May, the housing ministers of all EU More...

Nairobi—As emergency workers retrieved four bodies from a building that collapsed a week ago, bringing the death toll to 41, hundreds of Nairobi residents were evicted on Friday from nearby buildings that are being torn down to prevent other deadly disasters.
The demolitions began even as the rescuers continued digging the More...

Elena Petrache and her daughter Liliana have been living in Ex Cartiera, a dilapidated shelter for Roma in Rome’s industrial suburbs, since 2011. They share a small room, and Liliana’s daughter Denisa and her son share another.
Until recently, the kitchens were outside in a courtyard, but in February they were More...

This week in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), thirty community leaders and field researchers from the villages of the Inga Valley met to consider their fate in view of the planned Inga3 project that proposes to inundate their communities. Organized locally by Association Droit et Developpement (ADEV) the communities’ More...

Villagers in Doo Tha Htoo District Karen State are demanding to be paid full compensation for their lands they allege were illegally taken by one of Burma’s largest companies.
Residents of Shwe Yaung Pya village and surrounding villages in Thaton Township have made it clear that they want to get paid More...

Call for Applications: Scholarship for ECCHR`s Legal Training Program
Starting a career in international human rights work can require more than just having the requisite passion, motivation and skills. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) and the Kreuzberger Kinderstiftung, the scholarship sponsor, recognize this. There continue to More...

The Barro Blanco Dam will have a disastrous effect on Ngäbe communities inside the Comarca Ngäbe-Bugle and campesino communities also living on the banks of the river.
Ngäbe communities in western Panama are calling for support from the international community after officials from the Honduran-owned energy company, GENISA, warn that they More...

Crackdown on what Israel claims is illegal construction has already pitied Jerusalem against the EU, who funds some of the structures.
JERUSALEM—The United States is "concerned" about Israel`s demolition of Arab buildings in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, a State Department spokeswoman said on Friday, adding that it raised questions More...

ABA (OCCUPIED TIBET)—By mid-morning, Lobsang’s leather cowboy hat is askew, his black robes dishevelled, and his breath stinks of booze. Once a nomad herder roaming the high Tibetan plateau, instead he stumbles around his sparse new concrete house.
For decades he and his wife grazed yaks and sheep, living a life More...

I first met Larraine when we both lived in a trailer park on the far South Side of Milwaukee. Fifty-four, with silvering brown hair, Larraine loved mystery novels, “So You Think You Can Dance” and doting on her grandson. Even though she lived in a mobile home park with so More...

GENEVA (3 March 2016) – Homelessness is a fact of life in all countries of the world, regardless of the level of development of their economic or governance systems, and it has been spreading with impunity, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to housing, Leilani Farha, warned today More...

Farmers descend on Greek capital for protest against planned tax rises and pension reforms
Athens—Farmers wielding shepherds’ staffs have clashed with riot police in central Athens as thousands headed to the Greek capital for a two-day protest against the government’s plans to impose tax rises and pension system reforms.
About 800 farmers More...

As in many others cities of Europe, refugees meet both welcome and opposition. One such opposition militates against providing humane and decent housing for refugees in Hamburg. Local reports tell how the anti-refugee trend is voiced louder and louder every week, even in the middle class. A new alliance of More...

New Delhi—On Friday, Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN) launched its first Habitat III country report titled, Housing and Land Rights in India: Status Report for Habitat III. The United Nations (UN) Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III)—the third bidecennial international conference on habitat issues—will be held More...

Since the very early stages of the Habitat III preparations, Habitat International Coalition (HIC) has called for the integrity of the Habitat II (1996) commitments and modalities; this demand has three related aspects:
• Processes must uphold the Habitat II-established principle to be as inclusive as possible;
• Maintain the Habitat Agenda, More...

Today, a movement of concerned partners engaged in the Habitat III preparations issued a public challenge to the organizers of the global process, calling on them to rethink the omissions and design flaws that narrow the Habitat III public debate and presuppose its outcomes. From the beginning of the deliberative and reporting More...

On his site, U.S. filmmaker Michael Moore writes a public letter "10 Things They Won’t Tell You About the Flint Water Tragedy. But I Will." Read his letter below and follow the link to sign and share the accompanying petition.
FLINT MI—News of the poisoned water crisis in Flint has reached More...

The Global Convergence of Land and Water Struggles – West Africa invites you to join the West African Caravan for Land, Water and Seeds, which will mobilize 15 countries of the sub-region in March 2016 in order to
Ø Sensitize the populations of the West African countries about land, water More...

In a world where the richest 62 people are as wealthy as half of world`s population, Oxfam tells global economy leaders at the World Economic Forum meeting at Davos, Switzerland to correct their greedy behavior.
Oxfam’s new report, “Even It up: Time to End Extreme Inequality,” advises that only higher wages, More...

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has declared the Holy See legally responsible and accountable to Indigenous Peoples for effects and the legacy of racist, colonial Papal Bulls and Doctrines.
Geneva—As the result of a comprehensive parallel report and presentations by members of the Apache-Nde-Nnee Working More...

Rights groups say 140 people killed in recent weeks as government moves forward with controversial development plans.
Wolonkomi, Ethiopia—Security forces have killed at least 140 people during a crackdown on anti-government demonstrations in Ethiopia in recent weeks, activists and rights groups say.
The protests by members of the country`s largest ethnic group, More...

BRUSSELS—Today, the European water movement achieved a great victory.
The plenary of the European Parliament approved a report demanding the implementation of the human right to water in the European Union. This is one of the results of the long-term campaign that started with the collection of nearly 2 million More...

December 25, 2015 (ADDIS ABABA) – The Ethiopian prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn dismissed on Friday circulating rumours that his government secretly gave away part of the Horn of Africa’s territories to stakeholders in neighbouring Sudan.
Desalegn’s remarks came while responding to queries raised by members of the House of People’s Representatives More...

BRUSSELS—The European Court of Justice has this morning ordered the annulment of a trade agreement between Morocco and the European Union since it includes the territory of Western Sahara. "A landmark decision in the history of the occupation of Western Sahara," states Western Sahara Resources Watch (WSRW).
The judgment was More...

As the world’s leaders meet in Paris this week for critical climate change talks, new findings by the International Campaign for Tibet reveal that Tibet’s fragile environment, which is warming faster than anywhere else, is of critical global importance. But almost unnoticed by the rest of the world, China’s policies More...

Parallel to the climate conference in Paris, social movements and allies within the “Global Convergence of Land and Water Struggles” stand up for climate justice and real solutions to the climate crisis. This alliance of struggles has delivered its message to the COP21 currently meeting at Paris. Their statement follows.
The More...

HIC is participating in the current Conference of Parties, also known as COP21, which is gathering the 195 countries that have joined and ratified the UN Framework Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) following the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. In an effort address climate change, the states and organizations convened are More...

NEW YORK—“Trade must be made to work for human rights and development and not against them,” the United Nations Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Alfred de Zayas, has said today.
In his fourth report* to the UN General Assembly, Mr. de Zayas focuses on More...

In her second report to the UN General Assembly, Leilani called on States to include a human rights framework in the development of the New [Habitati] Agenda, to be adopted at the UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (also known as Habitat III), October 2016 in Quito, Ecuador. More...

NEW YORK / GENEVA—The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to housing, Leilani Farha, today has challenged governments to go further and commit to bold action to end homelessness and improve housing conditions on a global scale. “I am convinced we can end the scourge of homelessness More...

In his public appearance in New York City this week, Pope Francis delivered a spiritual message, but also addressed a bundle of corresponding human rights. Not least of these were the “three Ls”: lodging, land and labor. He also contextualized these essential elements of human dignity and human rights with More...

Forcible evictions fuel a housing crunch amid sharp welfare cuts and surging rent costs in London.
London, England—Housing activists mounted a last-ditch fight on Thursday to stop a disabled man from being forcibly evicted from his home and left with "nowhere to go" to make way for private properties to be More...

Habitat III National Reporting Guidelines (merged with State obligations)
This Excel file attempts to merge the national Habitat III report outline proffered by UN-Habitat with the already-standing commitments of states and UN bodies at Habitat II (1996). For those following UN-Habitat`s advice, the left column leads with the agency’s reduced six More...

On 22 September 2015, the United Nations Human Rights Council (Geneva) will consider the final report of its Advisory Committee on the Role of local government in the promotion and protection of human rights. The report is the outcome of a two-year study on the subject by the Human Rights Council More...

New York—Today, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) published its first recommendations in response to an individual complaint, regarding a violation of the right to housing, under the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (OP-ICESCR).
With its entry into force in More...

Amid Saharawi protests, San Leon Energy has begun to drill an on-shore well in occupied Western Sahara on 21 August.
The El Aaiun-4 conventional well is located on the so-called Tarfaya licence, near Foum el Oued, just above Western Sahara`s capital city El Aaiun. The drilling rig, a Cabot 750 More...

Land and resource rights are key to Sami people’s self-determination, United Nations rights expert says HEMAVAN / GENEVA—The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, today expressed concern at the land rights situation of the Sami people in Finland, Norway and Sweden, given the increased drive More...

Veolia sells its shares in the Jerusalem light rail and completes withdrawal from the Israeli market.
More than a decade after winning the tender for the construction and operation of the Jerusalem Light Rail (JLR), Veolia Environnement’s subsidiary, Transdev, has sold all of its holdings in the JLR to a group More...

By :Joseph Schechla, Habitat International Coalition – Housing and Land Rights Network

10 August 2015

The substantive debate toward the 2016 Habitat III Conference is warming up. The disappointment that states earlier expressed at PrepCom2 (Nairobi, April 2015) for slow progress in producing the draft material for the outcome document has subsided. The rich content of 22 Issue Papers, so far, has superseded some of More...

Wading through the knowledge products of the current Habitat process highlights a failure to account for previous commitments. HIC-HLRN’s Joseph Schechla critiques the process and content of Habitat III against the criteria forged at Habitat II.
* * *
The substantive debate toward next year’s Habitat III conference is now warming up. More...

Landmark Governing Council session debates UN-Habitat’s role in the development agenda
NAIROBI—The 25th session of the UN-Habitat Governing Council concluded on 23 April, following a week of debate on the wide array of issues surrounding today’s global process of urbanization. Highlighting the pivotal year for a review of the agency’s budget More...

Landmark Governing Council session debates UN-Habitat’s role in the development agenda
NAIROBI—The 25th session of the UN-Habitat Governing Council concluded on 23 April, following a week of debate on the wide array of issues surrounding today’s global process of urbanization. Highlighting the pivotal year for a review of the agency’s budget More...

HIC-HLRN has produced a new report from an ongoing study on the prospects of realizing the principles of the “right to the city” for specific cities in several regions.
This report finds that applying the "right to the city" in Jerusalem challenges the current governance grounded in discrimination against, and dispossession of More...

Landless citizens of a location just outside Nairobi have been fighting for their rights to land since Kenya’s independence 50 years ago. Successive governments – including those of two presidents, Jomo Kenyatta and his son Uhuru, who come from the area – have failed to give these people justice.
On Tuesday, More...

The group`s takeover of farms in Qaraqosh, 30km from Mosul, has caused fear among residents, and a jump in food prices.
Qaraqosh—In the dark of night, on a farm about 30km southeast of Iraq`s second largest city, Mosul, Sabah Zura Sukkariyya woke to the sound of a truckload of gunmen arriving More...